After 1989, the pan-Balkan mixed music ? this is, I believe, the term that suits it best (cf. Rădulescu, 2000) ? boomed unhindered all over the Romanian space. Ordinary people have changed its denomination several times: firstly, because it continually shifted shape, and they felt it was slipping through their fingers; secondly, because they traveled and learned more and thus found out that the names they used to call it by were not very accurate. The former music of Banat and/or Serb music becomes, in turn: Gypsy, Turkish, Arabian, and Oriental. The latter denomination (Oriental music) seems to be more satisfying, because both correct and vague: it is true that the new music is fraught with Oriental influences, but the Orient ? even if we are only talking of the Near or Middle East ? is a large area, inhabited by many peoples and ethnic groups, and a producer of different musical styles.

            The components of today?s pan-Balkan style differ as to source, aspect and relative weight from those of the 19^th century. The ?Turkish-Persian-Arabian? elements ? I follow Gheorghe Ciobanu?s suggestion (Ciobanu, 1970) in grouping them by dash in order to make evident their interconnection, cohesion and the impossibility to tell them apart ? have naturally perpetuated in drastically new forms. The Greek and Jewish elements have visibly withdrawn and have been altered beyond recognition; while the Serb, Gypsy (14) and other elements have become stronger. At first, the hypothetically Serb elements were predominant, at least in the western part of the Balkan area; later, the Turkish, Romanian and Macedonian etc. elements tried to take the upper hand; and lately, elements of an unidentified origin ? the result of complex pan-Balkan mixtures ? have become overbearing.

            An interesting thing to note is that in Romania, the pan-Balkan music unexpectedly reactivated a musical genre specific to previous centuries: the manea. This heavily ornamented ?melancholy love song? that had its own peculiar metric-rhythmical structure, had circulated until the 19^th century in the Romanian urban milieu, in combination with Turkish, Greek or ?Persian? verses (Alexandru, 1980, p. 265; Breazul, ???). It had also made its way into the rural fiddlers? craft in the Principalities, which made Tiberiu Alexandru note in 1980 (Alexandru, 1980, p. 273): ?Some old fiddler of the provinces south the Carpathians still knows how to play a Turkish manea.? The Bucharest fiddlers do remember, even to this day, the few manele of old, which were the delight of their parents? and grandparents? generation. Lately, some second-rate politicians who think they are men of culture have been patriotically vilifying the manea and suggesting ? just like at the time of the communists ? that it be banned from musical practice. Such an initiative not only gives proof of the said politicians? totalitarian reflexes, but also of their ignorance and obtuseness: they do not realize that its former longevity and popularity points to the masses? adherence to the manea, one which cannot be demolished by punitive measures.

            I am not trying now to determine why today?s fiddlers? music is looking towards the Balkans again. Neither am I trying to see why it is that the various styles of music interfere and coagulate in a generally undivided pan-Balkan style, which comes as a symbolic reply to the tensions among the ethnic groups in the region. I will not look into the signification that the change of balance among the musical styles that make up the mixture may have, or, in other words: into the reason why the Greek features faded away and made room for the Serb elements, which themselves eventually drew back and cleared the stage for the modern Turkish and Arabian influences, etc.